The earlier stuff was just for kicks

B/c I'm doing the rather insane act of flying back to America for my brother's wedding, & then back to Egypt in around 4 days, I won't be posting until then. The group is going to Mount Sinai/St. Catherines Monastery & Sharm al-Sheikh. Luckily, I don't care about going to any of those places. Okay, Im lying.

In other whiny news, the Arabic I learned & kinda remember, Modern Standard, is somewhat useless here. See, MS isn't usually learned until some later schooling, which Egypt doesn't have exactly a lot of. More importantly, taxi drivers or random people don't know it. Some of the words are the same, other's Egyptians pronounce differently (j's are said as a 'guh')

Tales of Woe

Americans love traveling. No doubt you either have or have known someone in college that backpacked around Europe & won't shut up about how great French/Italian/Spanish cafe culture is. I won't bother going on about it since stuffwhitepeoplelike stole my thunder already. Or I could say they already did the writing work for me. Suckers.

What I was going for is how in America there's a pretty good amount of shows telling you how great it is traveling to whatever place, & pretty much showing off how visiting somewhere else is a flawless, stress-free experience. They meet interesting, people, go to temples, & eat whatever they want/the producers demand they eat for ratings. In all this exotic fun though, there's something missing. The travel shows never mention transportation strikes, lost luggage, getting so lost its far past the point of being fun, oh, & getting really sick. Especially, this last one is glaringly missing.

Anthony Bourdain has touched on this, but there's likely a lot (TON) of toilet humor going on btwn the crew if they happen to be really anywhere but Europe. From experience, if you're on a trip where your innocent American digestive system is suddenly shocked by the presence of germs, a good chunk of group conversation will be about whats happening in the bathroom. Most of the time, fortunately, its going to be little more than an annoyance. This week we had a round of contenders who decided to kick up the standard for when it is appropriate to use the word "sick."

1. My friend, beginning w/ puking in the street & on her friends feet, later became the winner of the "First to go to the Hospital" award. As a bonus, she got to get a few rounds of shots in her butt.
2. The second contender simply gave up on leaving his room & parked himself in front of the toilet just to wait for whenever he was going to puke. *It should be noted that girls are far more likely to send each other to the hospital. Guys usually run on a "significant amount of blood" standard b/f the H word is mentioned.

The absolute winner of everyone so far, in sha'allah, is my roommate Buck. On a side note, in Jordan my roommate was pretty sick too. Weird. Anyway, this gets kinda gross, so be warned.

So Buck wakes up around 2am, & there's trouble in the stomach. He makes his way to the bathroom, he knows he's not feeling good. He did not know though he was soon going to be cursing Death for fleeing him. So Buck is sitting down, pants down on the toilet. Suddenly, he is going to throw-up w/o negotiation from his body. He turns around to puke, & his colon decides its close enough to a toilet anyway & unloads on the door. In Buck's description he used the word "Howitzer." So he eventually gets everything cleaned up. Unfortunately in this nightmare he still can't leave the communal bathroom since every time he tries, his body crosses the forcefield that tells him he needs to go back in. At some point during the night he puking (again) & again the ol' colon says "close enough."

This story is should be cited by people who pack heavily.

At that point he said he really preferred crapping his pants anyway since they were easier to clean up than the stall. You know you're having a bad night when that's your standards.

Update: To clarify the part about crapping his pants I found out he actually had them down but actively choose to pull them up cause he didn't want to wipe down the wall (again). I can't decide if that makes it better or worse.

This is why no one likes you

Since Muslim's have their big prayer day on Friday, Thursday night is like American Friday night.

(Side note- Apparently also Egypt decided to accommodate their Coptic population at some point in the last decade maybe, so Sunday is also off work. So instead of the common weekend in the Middle East of Fri-Sat, Egypt is Fri & Sun. -I need to ask more about that)

Anyway, I get roped in from going w/ a small group to a English pub to going w/ a larger group to one of the boat restaurants anchored on the Nile. Going out in large in a large group here suuuucks. The combo of trying to find a place people are happy w/, plus just a large group of people ordering means longer wait times (Egyptians & Americans have far different views on service & time to begin w/).

Anyway, so we end up settling in to this place. Most of us our drinking, food is ordered, people have fun, 2 people that made-out last week got into a fight, etc. Then comes time for the bill. It seems a bit high, on further inspection there's a reason-they are overcharging us on nearly everything. I imagine this trick works most of the time w/ foreigners in large groups spending pounds like they're water. We however still had menus close by. When confronted w/ that they are trying to rip us off he tries to explain its an "old menu." Yeah, the one we just ordered off of. To explain why the beer is more expensive the guy tells us that was the price for you small ones, we're drinking the big ones (which they gave to us).

I know things are getting worse here, but there's a line of providing tourist dollars into the economy & then being taken advantage of. You should try out the taxi's.

So, the student becomes the teacher...

And as it turns out, I kinda suck as a teacher. My partner & I went last week to teach, only to show up & be informed that the class was starting the next week. Instead we had coffee (=Nescafe) & cake at this guys house.

*I call this picture "Dogs playing outside of the church I teach in." I'll have to get a pic of the goat herds on the main street. (Click on it to make it bigger)

So we show up again this week, the cab driver gets lost in the dirt road slum & suckers me into way over paying him. The first day was fine; assessment test, & then a little lesson. At this point in the story I need to explain the total amount of prep we were given to teach:

1. One pretty useless meeting that distributed zero teaching materials
2. No information on the amount/level of students
3. A few days b/f we start we get 1 copy of about 15 pages
4. The response to an e-mail inquiring about getting some more materials & a better plan was basically "teach them English." Thanks.
   

I'm not bitching so much as I'm trying to explain we went in totally blind about nearly everything. Promise.

So the second day I march in (after learning how to ride the microbus, which are a mystery still). Lesson plan in hand, today we're really going to learn some Business English. Fast foward about 10 minutes to me standing there realizing for several reasons that my entire plan has just collapsed. & now the class wants to be w/ the other teacher. Well, not all of them.

So it looks like I have some homework this weekend.

Blowing off steam

This last weekend we took a jaunt to Alexandria. For the historical rundown: Alexander the Great founded the city, it was home to the Great Lighthouse, as well as the Great Library (which they re-built to be all fancy), also Napoleon invaded here too, leaving a French influence (& restaurants) in Egypt.

Since the dorms we live in are gender segregated, & there's generally few places places can express their romantic/lust feelings, the sexual tension/frustration of the group has steadily been boiling. Of course being let loose in a hotel w/o any of the security for who's in who's room & the ability to drink alcohol lead immediately to gossip, blossoming relationships, etc. (2 people had a preconceived plan & ran into a room as soon as we checked in) It's like I'm in a Jr. High Summer Camp. Except the girls have had more time to be spoiled. I'm just waiting for people to openly not like each other. Then it's going to get fun.

If you were itching to know- in Egypt the main source of alcohol seems to not be the independent liquor stores, but a chain that sells 4 kinds of beer & (expensive) liquor & wine.

Funny to see you here

I'm finally forcing myself to kick back up the blog. Awww thanks. W/o some sort of proof, i.e., pictures, some variation of journaling, etc. I tend to forget anything that ever happens. As it turns out, I've actually been here before. *Sigh* so young back then. Anyway, a quick run-down (which I plan to return to when I have time) of whats going on since I've landed in the Land of the Pharaohs.

1. Went to the Pyramids.
2. Any sickness struck early, I am now strangely back to full-health.
   This leads me to my 3rd point...
   
3. I unwittingly ate pizza w/ tuna on it. Which might just be kinda gross or whatever unless you happen to be allergic to it. Since I'm writing this you probably are suspecting I didn't die. Also, many of you know this was really my one weakness. If the allergy has somehow lifted, I suspect I may now be fully invincible.
4. I'm going to be teaching Iraqi refugees & Egyptians English. I now deeply regret actively refusing to learn grammar in the 4th grade. To be fair to my past self, it didn't seem all that important at the time.
   
5. I guess I'm not completely healthy since a blood vessel burst in my eye thus making me look kinda crazy/scary. I think it makes me look like a super villian.

And thats all for now, soon though I'll be typing away to tell the tales I've experienced so I can then refer to the blog when I'm talking about the same boring thing later-except in person.

We're going to Alexandria this weekend, which I'm sure has its own coolness. What's making it a little more entertaining though is a few guys thought to make a betting pool of who will make out w/ someone. Its kinda like that Office episode where they bet on everything.

p.s. looking back at previous posts I am fully aware of how many typo's of 1 sort or another are in them. blame it on trying to type a post as fast as possible & sometimes weird keyboards.